


On The Way To Work

by roundthatcorner



Category: The Beatles
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 11:13:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10638681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roundthatcorner/pseuds/roundthatcorner
Summary: How could Paul have so many dreams and one of them not come true? Paul and John, Hamburg and Liverpool, December 1960.





	

**Author's Note:**

> While writing this I did up a MOOD playlist, in case anyone want to listen as they read:  
> Paul: On My Way to Work, I Want You To Fly, Growing Up Falling Down, Road, Anyway  
> Beatles/proto-Beatles: I Don't Know (Johnny, Johnny), What You're Doing, In Spite of All The Danger  
> John: Forgive Me My Little Flower Princess (duh!!)
> 
> The details are mainly drawn from Tune In and Mike Mac's Thank U Very Much -- not sure they would appreciate the context in which I use their work, but credit where credit is due...

 

“but all the time I think of you

how far away the future seems

how could I have so many dreams,

and one of them not come true?”

\- paul mccartney, 'on my way to work'

* * *

 

In Hamburg they had slept during the day and been up all night, but now Paul's hours had flipped back, or should have done. He was exhausted all the time. Riding the bus to work in the wee hours of the morning he thought of skulking around in the back alleys of Hamburg at the same time of day. It seemed almost like another lifetime, now, though he had been back in Liverpool for just two weeks.

He had been so excited to be home at first, grateful and relieved to be there even if it was just with the clothes on his back and Mike's blue plastic mac, rolled up, which had gotten home only because he had happened to be wearing when the police picked him up. Mike had opened the door to his knocking and seemed to nearly fall down with shock as Paul said, “Merry Christmas, young Michael! Ready to hear the good news?”

His dad had been sitting in the front parlour in his favorite chair, listening to the radio and working on the crossword, and had stood up with start when he saw Paul. He had hugged Paul tightly; it had been so surprising and welcome that Paul had felt his throat tighten with emotion. He couldn't actually remember the last time his dad had hugged him before that – there had been lots of physical closeness between them when he was a child, but it had dropped away as he had grown up. For a moment, clutched in his dad's arms, he wished it hadn't and couldn't understand why it should have.

In their kitchen just afterwards he'd eaten as many bacon butties as his dad could cook, suddenly ravenous for familiar food, and sat at their little table feeling calm and warm and loved as Mike had pressed him for details about Hamburg and his dad had listened patiently.

The first few days back Paul had slept like the dead, puttered around the house, and gone to visit George, who had listened with fascination as Paul recounted his and Pete's troubled departure from Hamburg. Paul had even become a model, of sorts – drafted to pose for Mike and his recently acquired camera as Mike tried to recreate effects from the photography books he'd been borrowing from the Allerton library. With knowledge of the long, circuitous route George had taken to get back to Liverpool, Paul had figured that John would be home soon enough and in a sense was just biding his time until they were reunited.

After a few days of this sort of loitering, Jim had started making disgruntled noises in Paul's direction. He'd gone down to the Labour Exchange at his dad's insistence – 'Satan finds work for idle hands, son' ringing in his ears – and been given a job that was supposed to last just for the Christmas period. It was a good compromise, he'd thought. He would make some money, show his dad that he was still somewhat pliable, and have an easy exit from the working world when John got back.

Working was fun at first, or at least it had a certain sort of appeal. He could ride the bus and think, “I am _commuting_ , I am a labourer.” He even dressed the part, donkey jacket and work boots and all. He bought the Daily Mirror to read on the way and picked up a dirty magazine – it seemed tame now, after Hamburg's excesses – and filled out time cards. He traipsed into the depot with all the other blokes, shaking the damp cold off, and felt quite adult about the whole thing.

His interest hadn't held for even a week, though. The driver Paul was delivering with wouldn't let Paul control the radio, not even for part of the day, so Paul was stuck listening to the _Home Service_ for endless, monotonous hours. They didn't have much to say to each other, either; the man was decidedly unimpressed by rock 'n' roll and did not seem to have much of a sense of humor. He had even complained about Paul's whistling, so Paul had started to do it as loudly as possible whenever he jumped out of the lorry to make a delivery, stopping with a flourish right before he got back in. The driver might control the interior of the truck but Paul was under no obligation to him outside of it.

Paul made no other friends at work, either; they were all enough older that Paul felt he could not bridge the gap, though he tried to be affable and polite. He made small talk in the mornings and during breaks, but ate lunch alone and did not venture to the pubs with them after work.

By the second Monday Paul had started to wish the bus would crash on the way to work, or at least break down.

Mostly, though, Paul thought of John. Endless hours on the bus and the truck were giving him plenty of time to ruminate about their relationship. At first he had expected that John would turn up or call at any moment, the future there, imminent, but as the days passed he no longer knew what to think or how to feel. John had evidently decided to stay in Hamburg. Paul tried to consider it from John's perspective: Stuart was there, as were his German friends, and there was the possibility of playing with Tony or whatever...but none of that would hold any appeal for Paul unless John was with him (and some of it not even then). The thought that John would weigh those things against his friendship with Paul and find Paul lacking was too painful to deal with, but Paul could not get the idea out of his head.

From the upper deck of the bus Paul could watch people hurrying to work, or huddled against the cold while waiting for their own buses. Somehow looking in at other people's lives gave him perspective; he had the sense that he could see, now, how it had all come to be. Less clear was how it had all fallen apart.

He tried to consider a future without John in it. They had always dreamt together, nearly as much as they had laughed together, and now all their dreams seemed to have disappeared. The dream that had been knotted at the center of all the others was John, and with him cut out the other threads had simply slipped away. The future stretched out, lackluster and hazy. Paul had thrown away everything for John – done it joyfully, even, without a second thought. And now he had nothing to show for it – well, he thought ruefully, nothing besides a single A-level. Even his worthless Solid 7 was stuck in fucking Hamburg.

Time, too, can give perspective and block it, Paul thought. He had spent nearly every day with John since the moment that they met – or, rather, since the moment Paul had returned from scout camp and the holiday at Butlins and taken his place in the Quarrymen. Their relationship had quickly taken precedence over everything else in his life. They could spend all day together and would still call each other up before going to bed...maybe they had simply gotten too close, spent too much time together. But the days without John had not lessened Paul's desire for him, even if the distance allowed him to think more clearly – for the first time, really – about it.

The sexual thing between them had maybe complicated things but not, essentially, changed them, as far as Paul could see. They were more secretive about their relationship, certainly; they had to be. The exclusivity had deepened. The thought that it had somehow ruined their friendship, spoiled it, occurred to Paul but he pushed the idea away; he did not see or want to see how it could have been avoided. They generated so much energy between the two of them that the sexual part of their relationship seemed almost inevitable, inseparable from the rest of it.

The _sexual part_ of their relationship – he rolled the words over in his mind. Well, _sex,_ that was what it was, Paul thought; there was no use being coy about it. For a while after it started he had resisted thinking of it in those terms, preferring to pretend it was simply an extension of the masturbation games John had drawn all his friends into. At least to himself, though, Paul had not bothered with that pretense for some time; he knew that it may have grown out of the games, but it had been something different from the beginning, something intrinsic and special between them. Even before they'd ever touched each other, when they would skive off school to go home and wank together and practice guitar and write and doodle and listen to records, Paul would spend the whole bus ride buoyed up with anticipation, thinking of what they were going to do _together_ once they'd reached his room. Reacting to John reacting to him – hearing John's breath catch as he watched Paul sidelong, during the period in which they still pretended not to know that they were watching each other -- it had always been far more akin to sex than it was to masturbation.

Paul tried to focus; he did not want to think about certain things on the bus. He did not want those memories sullied or dampened by recalling them too often, especially not now. He needed to understand what had happened between them – where it had all gone wrong – as if understanding it could somehow dull the ache in his chest when he thought of John.

He had been terribly homesick in Hamburg – for his dad and brother and Aunties and Uncles, missing his own bed and good English food and familiar streets. But more than anything he had been homesick for the person who was right there, but who had chosen to distance himself for reasons Paul could not understand. How could they have traveled so many miles together, spent every day and night together for months on end, been practically alone among people clattering on in a language they couldn't even understand, and have ended up so distant from each other? How could they have gone through so much, and Paul was still left to search for him?

The trouble had started nearly as soon as they got to Hamburg, he thought. Not the very first night, falling asleep in the booths at the Indra with John's head tucked on his shoulder, but once they had got access to their rooms and Paul had been shunted into the back room with Pete. It was not like he had expected that he and John would be able to _do anything_ in Hamburg, he knew from Scotland that they would have the other lads around all the time, but he had at least expected to get to chatter at John as they fell asleep, get to share in the laughter and fun and comradery. Instead, he got to hear George and Stu giggling at John's muffled jokes from the next room and listen to Pete snore, on the rare nights that Pete was even there.

Paul had spent the first few weeks of the Hamburg residency in a disgruntled state, complaining in a way that he knew was rapidly veering past tiresome. The more standoffish John got, the more Paul had nagged and whined; from the present vantage point Paul could see that very clearly. John had not wanted to hear Paul groaning about the bedrooms (' _Everyone's_ bed is fucking awful, Paul', he'd said, sourly refusing to see that Paul's was especially intolerable). The worst arguments had been precipitated by the terrible, grinding tension Paul felt over Stu's presence – John had, of course, not wanted to hear a word of it. That John gave Stu more shit than anybody, or that John knew as well as Paul did that Stu was not musically worth a damn, did not make a difference when John made up his mind that Paul had gone too far. There had been a moment, hissing at each other between sets after yet another song where Stu's fingers had been dead useless, when Paul had had to bite his tongue against the abrupt urge to spit, “So, Stu's sucking your dick then, too?”

That fear, of course, had been an old one, reignited every time Paul visited Gambier Terrace to see their shambolic harmony, every time John reached into Stu's pocket to grope out a cigarette. The words had died before Paul had spoken them, and when he had time to think it over, he was glad they had. Nothing John could have replied would have been comforting in the least – if he had admitted it, Paul would have been left to face that there was nothing he could do for John, not even that, that Stu wouldn't do also. And a denial would have almost been worse, because that would mean that Stu was in the band solely because John _liked_ him and wanted him around, a sort of deference or credit not given to any of the rest of them.

The night after that argument a part of Paul had been braced for further tension; another part of him had been ready to instigate it, hoping that a blow-up would force John to acknowledge him and allow them to move past whatever awful awkwardness had arisen between them. But instead the mood had been calm – or at least as calm as their feverish _maching schau_ allowed -- on stage, and afterwards they had all gone out together with what seemed to Paul to be a feeling of great unity. Even Pete had been less taciturn than usual. It was, Paul had thought, the best night they had yet had in Hamburg. John and Paul had gotten separated from the others while drunkenly goggling at the girls along the Herbertstrasse and had ended up stumbling back to the pit alone. Figuring John's good mood would allow him to see reason, to be a benevolent ruler once again, Paul had just been about to start in on _it_ \-- 'John, come on, I don't see why _I_ should have to be stuck in the back room' – when John had practically dragged him by the back of the collar into the bathroom.

He had barely gotten out a “Christ, mate, what --” before he had realized that John was unzipping his pants and pressing his hard cock into Paul's hand.

“Here, come on,” John had said, and Paul had felt a surge of relief even before the adrenaline or arousal had hit him. Pressing John back against the door to block anyone else from entering, he had thrown his right arm around John's neck and proceeded to toss him off, hand firm and knowing. John's eyes were squeezed closed as he thrust into Paul's hand, but everything else had suddenly seemed so open and wonderful: John's warm, welcome breath on his face; the compliant way he arched forward, his head dropping down onto Paul's shoulder as he came across Paul's wrist.

Paul had broken away to wash his hand off and meant to leave John, recovering, to guard the door, so he had been surprised to feel John press up tightly behind him, resting his chin on Paul's shoulder and watching him wash his hands via the mirror. When John had begun nuzzling into Paul's neck Paul had been so pleased, almost thrumming with happiness, that he had heard himself practically cooing John's name.

John had backed away, zipped his pants up, and strode out the door before Paul could even really register that he was gone. It was later, having slunk back to his room ashamed and half-hard, lying alone in bed and listening to Stu and George and John talk each other to sleep, that Paul let himself feel it.

Excepting actually being arrested and taken to the airport in handcuffs by the sort of people who had surely been involved in war crimes, the nadir of Paul's Hamburg experience had come a few nights after that. He had managed to get one of the girls from the strip club next to the Kaiserkeller into bed, had actually just slipped inside her, when he had heard John banging around in the hallway outside, calling out for him in a beseeching sort of tone. Before Paul had been able to react, John had stumbled into the doorway between their rooms and frozen.

The light from the window in the other room was enough, given the hour of the morning, for even John to see what Paul was doing. Any of them would normally have excused himself with a mumbled, “Ooer, oops, sorry, mate...”, but something wretched had entered John's face and he stared openly at the girl and Paul as Paul pulled away from her and she rushed to cover herself with his jacket. Paul could only watch with dread as John whirled around, exiting back from where he had come. He had just managed to find his jeans and wriggle inside them when John reappeared, having scrounged up a pair of scissors from God-knows-where. He was shaking but his face had looked bizarrely, shockingly calm.

The girl yelped. Paul had gotten to his feet, startled into reaction by the noise; he had meant to crowd John away from her and out into the hall but John was somehow too quick, moving faster than his probable state of intoxication would seem to allow. For a moment Paul was frightened, but not for himself; he was not sure he could protect the girl from John if John decided to go after her. But instead, John darted around Paul and grabbed the girl's dress from the spot on the floor where Paul had tossed it earlier; it took Paul a giddy, anxious moment to realize that John had determined to use the scissors to cut at the dress. The girl was freaking out somewhere behind him, panicking now in her own language, too upset to bother with her broken English. It wasn't until John had dropped the hem of the dress to the floor and pinned it there under his heel to saw at it more easily that Paul found his own voice.

“John, what the – fuck – stop it,” and then, more frantic, yelling as John ignored him, seemingly enthralled by his task, “George! _George_! Fuck – Stu! Christ!”

There were a few terrible moments of watching John stabbing fervidly at the dress before George had come rushing down the hall and into the room with Pete on his heels.

“He's – fuck, I don't know – he just went wild – get her out of here!” Paul had shouted, gesturing George forward towards the girl, and then, turning towards Pete, “Just – stay here! Help me – watch him...”

The girl had scrambled to reach the end of the bed just as John had tired of stabbing at the dress and started looking for something else to destroy. Paul snatched her jacket and stockings and knickers off of the floor before John could get to them and threw them at George, who managed to catch them, shoving the girl in front of him and out into the next room. Lacking any more of her clothes to ruin, with the dress lying partially destroyed at his feet and no attempt made to go after any of Paul's things, John instead began to rant. He was choking on his words to the extent that Paul struggled to catch what he said – _whore, you,_ and _fucking_ all stood out clearly, repetitive _,_ and once something that sounded like _mine_ , but the rest was a wash, the crazed, feral, desperate sound of it the only obvious meaning. Paul had become intensely, uncomfortably aware of Pete's presence then.

George had rushed back in to scoop up what remained of the dress, and then exited once more; Pete, having evidently decided he had fulfilled his duties, followed after him, and Paul had been left to face John alone. He could hear the girl crying somewhere out in the hall. His anger and panic had evaporated more quickly than he could really understand, replaced by the intense desire to soothe John, to be with him in whatever this was.

“John --” Paul said, approaching John with a hand outstretched, “John...here, shh, s'alright...”

John had reached out and pulled Paul forward, yanking him into a tight embrace. Paul could feel John's shirt catching on his own sweaty chest as John shifted, breathing heavily. With John's head tucked against his shoulder and his hand clenched at the back of Paul's neck, Paul had felt curiously like he was carrying one of his little cousins home at the end of a long day. His heart had stuttered, aching for home.

John had pulled back, looking at the floor like he couldn't quite understand what had happened.

“'M going to sleep...,” John muttered, and went to drop onto Paul's bed, curling up on his side with his head on Paul's jacket. Paul watched him for a heavy, confused moment and then headed for the bathroom, desperate to wash his face and clear his head.

He had been drying his hands when George came in.

“She let me walk her a few blocks, but then she waved me off,” George said in response to Paul's raised eyebrows, “Probably she'll have an aversion to Englishmen for the rest of her life.”

“Thought the war did that.”

George didn't laugh.

“'Should have seen her at first, Paul...she was acting like she'd nearly died – couldn't calm her down...she kept asking me _'Why? Why?'_ ” George said. He had looked at Paul sharply then, brow furrowed, “I tried to tell her 'jealousy' – but she couldn't understand me and I don't know the German for it.”

Paul's mouth had gone dry, the implication dense around them, and he stumbled as he said, “ – No, it's not...he was just out of control, wasn't he? You know...it's wild here, Hamburg, isn't it?”

George had frowned at him but did not press the point.

“Right. Well, I reckon we'll be unwelcome at Studio X now, so mind that...,” George had said, and then as he opened the door, “You'll want to tell John the same, I don't suppose he'll remember this.”

Paul had intended to head back to sleep in his own bed, curled up tight to John, ready to greet him when he awoke, but with George's eyes heavy upon him he had instead sunk into a restless sleep in John's bed.

George had been right, though: John didn't seem to remember the incident and Paul could not find the words or the mettle to ask about it.

The only positive side of the whole fucking trip, looking back, had been that Stu had 'fallen in _love_ ' and more or less decided to leave the band. It had taken three hellish months in Hamburg, but Paul had finally managed to shake Stuart.

That he had lost John in the process was an irony too sad to contemplate.

* * *

Paul had just barely stepped in the front door of his house and gotten his jacket off when he heard the phone ringing. He debated not answering it – it had been a long, dispiriting day -- but the thought of who could be on the line pushed him forward.

“Paul?” was George's response to the shuffle of the phone being picked up.

“Mmm, hullo, George,” Paul said. He tried not to acknowledge his disappointment. George had been calling regularly since Paul had started work, steady and reliable as ever, but his presence only threw John's absence into relief in a way Paul found hard to bear.

“Good, I'm glad I caught you, I've been trying – you won't _believe_ – I was at the Jacaranda earlier, Stu had sent a letter for me, and _John_ was there! He said to tell you --”

“-- John? You saw John? When – when did he get home?”

“Yes, I saw him. I think he said he got back a few days ago...? Strange, innit? He said to let you know --”

“Is he still there, then?” Paul said, urgent. He was reeling; John had been home – for days, evidently -- and had not made any effort to see him.

“Well, Christ, Paul, I dunno. _I've_ been _trying_ to tell you that John said to tell you that we need to rehearse. It's been sorted – Mrs. Best wants us on Saturday and Pete's friend, that Chas bloke, will fill in on bass, so we've got to practice,” George said in a slightly disgruntled rush.

“I've got to work --”

“Right, I told John that – should've seen his face – so we've all agreed to meet up after you get off tomorrow,” George interrupted.

“Right,” Paul said, and then again, “John is still at the Jac, then?”

“Told you I can't say, didn't I? Listen – I've got to go, I'll see you tomorrow. Bring your Zenith,” George said, and with a quick 'Right, okay, bye', Paul hung up the phone.

It would take two buses to get Paul to the city centre and he was exhausted in a bone-deep way borne of drudgery and loneliness -- but John was home, and there was no question that Paul would go to him.

* * *

 Paul should've spent his time on the bus planning the best approach, but instead he had stared out the window in a sort of dead-eyed stupor, and so he found himself entering the Jacaranda mentally unprepared. If John had his druthers, and he usually did, he would be sequestered with a few friendly faces in his favorite corner booth downstairs, holding forth on whichever topic suited him for the moment; Paul knew this instinctively, with the unthinking familiarity of a long friendship, and so he headed for the stairs, taking the first few by twos but slowing before he reached the bottom. He did not want to appear over-eager when John was evidently unfussed to see him.

John looked exactly as Paul had known he would, Bill and Rod and Jon and some lesser friends from school crowded around the periphery of the booth while John sat, figuratively spotlighted, in the central seat. Mimi had evidently made him get a haircut, but otherwise he was just as Paul had left him, his leather jacket covering broad shoulders, the collar of his lavender shirt askew. Paul's stomach swooped. John was beautiful -- he was so real, tangible and _there._

Paul had figured, walking towards the booth, that John would be the last to spot him, that he would have to get right up against the table before John could see him, but either someone whispered that he was there or else John just intuited it, because he stopped talking and turned to peer at Paul almost immediately. Paul wondered, for the millionth or more time, if John could choose to read his mind. The strength of what was wound between them sometimes seemed so enormous.

Normally Paul would have greeted John's friends, not out of any particular fondness towards them, but simply because it was what one did. Now, though, he walked up to the table, inclined his head towards John, and said only, “Coming?”

He heard titters of awkwardness from their audience, but ignored them. John's friends – the ones he invited to join the band for no reason, the ones he hung out with when he hadn't even notified Paul that he was back in the country, the ones who would act too cool for John's little grammar school boy friends but who always _always_ looked to Paul to put things right when John was out of control or unaccountably morose or dead drunk – could get fucked. Paul really just could not be bothered with any of them.

John scrambled out of the booth. Paul waited until they were secluded to the side of the stairwell, out of sight of John's friends, before asking, “Been here long, then?”

“Oh, y'know, Paul, it's only been a few hours or so,” John said, sounding unbothered but looking at Paul's shoulder. He scuffed his boot on the floor.

“Ha. Mmm. No, I meant _here,_ Liverpool,” Paul replied – he knew that John had known what he meant.

“Can't remember, really. A few days. A week, maybe. Doesn't matter.”

Paul chewed his lip. It was worse than George had said. A _fucking week_ John had left him in limbo.

“Did George tell you he asked Johnny Gustafson to join the band?” John said, clearly casting about for a change of subject.

“Johnny Gustafson hates us,” Paul said dismissively.

“Well, guess we're lucky he turned him down, eh? George told you about the rehearsal, then?”

“George? Oh, yes, George told me. Tells me lots of things, calls me up all the time, does George,” Paul said, digging in his heels, “Steady lad – good friend, y'know?”

“Christ, Paul, I get it --”

“Do you?” Paul responded quickly, interrupting him.

John glanced up at him, wary. Paul suddenly felt exhausted. You could spend years being someone's best mate – being more than that, really, though Paul supposed that was moot now too – and wind up talking past each other. John remained silent. For all John's aggressiveness, Paul thought with a sharp sense of clarity, John could also be a _fucking genius_ at sitting back and ignoring a problem, turning his head away, too impatient to deal with it or get his hands dirty.

“I'll see you tomorrow, John,” Paul said, turning to head up the stairs.

* * *

The familiar setting of the Casbah made it clear how much they had progressed as a band during the weeks in Hamburg. Paul even allowed himself a small, smug thought towards Stu, stuck in Hamburg, John-less, while John and Paul were busy creating something so much better than some incoherent smudges of paint.

If Paul had been mostly aware during the weeks of John's absence of how much he had missed John, it was obvious now that he had not allowed himself to consider how much he missed this – making music with a band that (if Paul ignored Pete's still shaky grasp of time, _Christ_ ) was right on the verge of transcendence.

_Gone, Gone, Gone...Sweet Little Sixteen...Hallelujah, I Love Her So –_ each one sounded better than the last. The excitement was incredible, incomparable, Paul knew. He could _feel_ it, and there was nothing on earth to touch that feeling.

They ran through _Wooden Heart_ for the fourth or fifth time for Chas' benefit, and then pronounced the set ready for the next night. George and Chas trailed Pete upstairs on the promise of some food from Mrs. Best, so Paul and John were left alone together in the basement. Paul felt John hovering beside him as he stowed his guitar.

“Alright, mate?” John said. He fussed with his sideboards in an endearing, nervous manner.

Paul straightened up and wondered how to answer him. _You fucked off and I didn't know where or why. I thought about you all the time. I thought about you turning up at Forthlin while I was at work and you not knowing where I was. I thought about you calling and not knowing why I didn't pick up. I thought about you all the time, you stupid_ fuck.

“Mmm-um,” Paul hesitated. He had spent most of the previous evening after leaving John and much of the day considering what to do. Part of him wanted to get John to acknowledge that John had treated him badly, but the other part just wanted to smooth it over, let John back in, be close to him, and then closer still. He looked at John, who shifted his own gaze to the ceiling.

“I – I should've called you. But it wasn't a year, y'know, only a couple of days,” John said, looking uncomfortable.

“It was _two_ _weeks_ , John.”

“Well...? I didn't mean anything by it. You didn't need to fuck off and get a _job_.” John sounded almost comically exasperated. Paul would've laughed if he hadn't been so frustrated. Just like John, he thought, to act like getting a job was an act of rebellion or betrayal.

“It's hard to convince your dad that you can't get a job because you're in a band when you no longer seem to _be_ in a band, mate,” Paul said, letting his own exasperation tinge his voice.

“You're still in a band,” John said immediately. He came over to lean against the wall next to Paul.

“Can't blame me dad for not understanding that, though, yeah? All he knew was that you weren't calling, weren't stopping by to beg supper off him, no rehearsals, no gigs...like you'd disappeared. Didn't know if you were in Hamburg or in the middle of the ocean.”

“Your dad thought all that, did he?” John was smiling slightly, now, shuffling closer, but Paul wasn't ready to let him off the hook. Paul kept his face impassive, pushing back against the urge to smile in response.

“ _Yes_ , he did. And the founding member of your fan club, our kid, wouldn't shut up about it, either,” Paul groused. “'Where's John? What's John doing?' Mike was organizing a fucking search party for you. Enough to drive me mad...”

“At least someone missed me, eh?” John grinned.

“One person. One very irritating person. Hardly a person, even,” Paul replied. He felt the corner of his mouth quirk, betraying him.

“Remind me to thank him when I see him. I'll be sure to give him a kiss,” John said, launching into his eyebrow-waggling routine. He seemed to know he had found his way back in. Paul sent John a dirty look, at which John scoffed.

“Oh ho, now there's a reaction. Well, there'd be one for you, too, but it seems _you_ don't want them.”

“Never said that,” Paul shot back. John grinned more broadly yet, and cleared his throat.

“What are you doing then, tonight?”

“Usually I would say, 'hanging out with my best mate', but he's been acting strange lately, y'know,” Paul replied. He had not purposefully decided to make this difficult, but there was something engaging about making John woo him a little, about John's apparent willingness to do it.

“Ha ha. Like I said, or maybe I didn't, water under the bridge now. I'll stop by then, yeah?” John looked at him expectantly. There was something apologetic, maybe even a little submissive, in his posture, Paul thought.

“Okay,” Paul smiled back at him, finally, before frowning slightly. “But after supper, I doubt dad will be in the mood to feed you.”

“Oh, he just needs to be reminded of my charms, that's all,” John said airily.

“Charms? What charms?” Paul cracked, wrinkling his nose in John's direction. Truthfully, John was the most charming person Paul had ever met; that was part of the problem.

John pushed off the wall slightly, turning to press into Paul's side instead.

“You know...” John said softly. Paul watched, suddenly quite breathless, as John dropped his eyes to peer at Paul's lips.

“Yeah...”

John took a step back, turning to blink at the door. Paul exhaled slowly.

“Well, I've got to be off – Mimi has been _utterly_ lost without me. See you and your old man later then, yeah?”

“Alright,” Paul said, and watched John head out the door.

* * *

 John did turn up at Paul's house that night, timing it impeccably so as to miss the supper hour and avoid riling Jim. Paul was finishing up the dirty dishes when he heard Mike's yelp of excitement, and dried his hands in time to watch John stroll into the kitchen, Mike trailing behind him. Paul had to grin at the scene – John seemed as willing and able to soak up Mike's adoration as Mike was to give it.

“Alright, then?” John said, coming over to press his hip against the counter to the side of Paul.

“Alright, yeah. Mike, leave off, you'll smother him,” Paul said, glancing between their smiling faces. Mike cast a dark look at Paul and then looked back to John. When John made no move to dismiss him, he smiled again, a smug little grin just for Paul.

“Your dad's watching telly?” John tilted his head towards the front of the house. He had changed out of the leather he had been wearing at the Casbah and back into his old ordinary jacket; Paul wondered if this was for Mimi's benefit or for Jim's.

“Yeah. You should say hello, y'know, he'd like that,” Paul responded. It was true. For all that Jim worried and wondered about John and about their relationship and its effect on Paul, Paul knew Jim essentially liked John – or _wanted_ to like him – very much. Jim had asked him about John during John's absence; not as much as Mike, sure, but enough that Paul had started dreading supper a little. Having to stammer out a cheery reply about your best friend's abandonment of you – trying to cover up that he had abandoned you – was no easy task.

John followed Mike into the front parlour, and Paul went to lean against the doorway, watching as Jim reached to shake John's hand. John took a split-second to wipe his presumably sweaty palm on his jeans before he clasped Jim's hand. John always seemed awkward around parents – with the notable exception of George's mum, who had taken to John immediately (Paul generally tried not to think of what his own mum would have thought of John).

Paul supposed John's social clumsiness with parent-types evened things out, though; his appeal to people their own age was so strong that it only seemed fair that he shouldn't be able to draw just anyone into his orbit. There needed to exist a class of people for whom John's charms (and _yes,_ there were many, Paul thought fondly) had a limited appeal.

Jim had by this point told John to have a seat, and was asking him with interest about driving through Holland, then about German roads, German engineering and German sausages. Paul wondered if his own lack of embarrassment was simply because he knew how well John knew his family, or if it was a mark of growing up. John was game throughout all of it, somehow; he was bunched up in his peculiar John way in the corner of the couch, though Paul noted that he kept his shoes off the fabric in a way he wouldn't have bothered with if Jim hadn't been there. Paul vaguely hoped that John would have the sense not to let slip just how desperate their conditions had been – he himself had been deliberately obscure about where exactly they had slept and the sort of neighborhood they had found themselves in. And _of course_ the exact circumstances of Paul's departure had been masked; his dad would never let him out of the house again in his _life_ if the thought of Paul in handcuffs was allowed to enter his mind.

Mike had quietly taken the seat on the couch next to John, so Paul ended up in the chair across from them, letting himself watch John. John was worth watching. His quiff was drooping slightly against his forehead, and the off-white color of Paul's Auntie's doily ( _antimacassar_ , he intoned solemnly to himself), draped over the back of the couch, seemed perfectly chosen to highlight the auburn color of John's hair. Having not seen John in weeks, it was very easy to be struck by his looks. Paul had thought John was about the best-looking lad he had ever seen way back when they had first met, and his opinion had only strengthened since then. To watch John in the morning, sharing a pillow as the sunlight poured into his little bedroom – or to watch him on stage, smiling into the microphone, spotlighted – or to watch him, laughing loudly in the back row of a double decker bus – or to watch him gasping brokenly as he came into Paul's hand – _God_ – who wouldn't want to watch him all the time?

John glanced over at Paul and smiled swiftly before looking back to Paul's dad. He was now telling him about their Hamburg set-list and how and why they had added and subtracted to it, letting Jim muse about the difference in taste between Liverpudlian audiences and the ones they had found overseas. All of the sudden Paul felt intensely, immeasurably fond of John, who had evidently garnered that he needed to smooth things over with Paul's dad and who was now patiently at work doing so. Sometimes he could be so _good_.

Paul had missed him so much.

* * *

They had gone on a walk after Jim had satisfied himself with John's recollections of Hamburg, skirting the edge of the golf course and bumping elbows and hips as they strolled. At some point John had decided to try climbing a tree, and Paul had nearly fallen over laughing after the branch had creaked rather ominously below him and he had immediately looked to Paul with unconcealed panic.

Paul was pleased when John made no move to break off towards his own home, instead hovering close as they headed back towards number 20. Paul knew, and wondered vaguely if John knew, that he was stalling so that Jim would be in bed before they got home, and thereby get no chance to ask if John was intending to stay the night. It would be better if Jim didn't know at all, actually, if John could be hustled into and out of Paul's bedroom with Jim none the wiser. Paul had been thinking that there must be a point at which it was no longer excusable to have your male best friend sleep in the same bed as you for no reason -- when his house was so close, at least; when you were no longer fifteen or sixteen year old kids but grown men. He did not want his dad pondering that point too closely. So instead of rushing home to press John into his mattress, to smooth his hands over John's chest and grip his thighs and kiss him over and over like he wanted to do, he walked deliberately slowly and then had them stop to share a smoke.

John leaned close to light it for him, knocking the toes of their boots together, and then didn't lean away. Paul smiled around the cigarette, sucking in. The night was chilly but he could feel the heat coming off John's body, roiling the fraction of an inch between them.

“Give it here, then,” John said, bumping Paul's knee with his own, and Paul held it up to John's mouth, his fingers grazing John's chin. John inhaled; his eyes never left Paul's as he reached up for the cigarette. He smiled, handing it back to Paul, and started to hum a little. Paul could easily fit the words to the tune... _just you know why, why you and I..._ Paul felt his heart beat in his throat. He finished the cigarette and crushed it under foot.

“Suppose your dad and Mike are asleep then?” John asked.

“Christ, I hope so,” Paul said, turning to start the few blocks towards home.

* * *

 When Paul finished in the bathroom and re-entered his bedroom, John was already stretched out under the covers, his jeans and button-up shirt discarded on the floor. Paul thought of John's bare legs against his sheets and then could think of nothing but joining him there, as soon as possible. He pulled his sweater over his head quickly and heard John say, laughing as he spoke, “Good lad, knows what he wants.”

Paul shook his hair out of his face and smiled, saying, “Well, it's been a while, hasn't it?” He wasn't even really mad anymore, had only been mad for a second, really. It would do more to kiss his meaning into John's lips, press it into his skin, then it would to try to put it into words.

Paul yanked off his t-shirt and dropped it on the chair, and then started undoing his belt. He could feel John watch him, gaze intense, as he curled it into a loose circle and placed it on his desk. He went to switch the light off.

“Yeah,” John breathed. His tone had shifted; he spoke lowly, “Yeah, it's been a while...”

John paused. Paul waited.

John exhaled heavily and then continued, “...I could hardly stand it...not being able to touch you, not having anyplace private to take you...”

“You thought about it in Hamburg?”

John was surveying him steadily. He touched his tongue to his lip in a way that made Paul's pulse leap, and said, “Christ, yeah, I thought about it....some intense form of fucking torture, that was -- having to watch you prance around in your leathers...”

Paul felt a swoop of arousal send him almost off-kilter, but he still managed to seize on the remark.

“'Prance'?! I don't --”

He didn't quite catch John's eye-rolling but could sense that it had occurred.

“Well, whatever you want to call your...your being yourself, it's distracting, and about _three times_ as distracting when done whilst you're wearing leather.”

Paul had gotten his socks and jeans off and went to lean against the bed, one knee on top of the mattress, letting John watch him in the dim light from the window and waiting to move under the covers.

“You liked me in leather, then?” Paul grinned, flirting outrageously even though there was no need, with his boy already in his bed and sounding so worked-up. John's eyes dropped to linger on the front of Paul's briefs. Paul could feel himself getting hard and knowing John could see it, too, made him harder still. God, they could set each other off...

John groaned quietly, “Fuck, yes. I wanted you...”

“...mmm?”

“Christ, Paul...I wanted you on your hands and knees in my bunk, I wanted to – to bend you over and fuck you – I wanted --”

Paul clambered over the edge of the mattress and pressed himself on top of John so quickly that John gasped. He could feel John's cock pushing headily against his hip and he exhaled shakily, bringing his hands up to twist in John's hair. John tilted his head up to kiss him, hard.

Paul could feel himself trembling slightly as he yanked the sheets out from between them and pulled them over the two of them instead. He had missed this; God, he was so happy to be doing this again. He opened his lips against John's, using his tongue to push John's lips apart and licking into his mouth. They kissed, mouths blooming against each other, for a long moment.

John gripped his bicep with one hand, the other moving to push Paul's briefs down and palm at his bare arse. Paul moaned quietly into John's mouth and shifted his hips so that their cocks dragged together. Even through two layers of cloth, the feeling made Paul's head spin outrageously. John's legs spread apart and Paul surged into the gap between them, thrusting against John shallowly. Their breath was heavy and hot between them

John still had his undershirt on, and Paul moved one hand down to pull the part of it that wasn't pinned underneath John up towards his armpit. Paul thought back to when he had taken his own shirt off for the first time during one of their early dual wanking sessions, muttering something nonsensical about the heat. He had tiptoed over that line, if it had indeed been a line, hoping only that John would follow, wanting, with a certainty he hadn't yet been able to credit, to watch the muscles in John's shoulders and arms as he jerked himself. John had paused and blinked at the floor, but he had ripped his own shirt off, then, too – the urge to touch him had made Paul's fingers tremble.

Paul flattened his palm over John's nipple; he could feel his heart beating a rapid rhythm, surely right flush against his skin. John pushed his chest up against Paul's hand, so Paul dropped his mouth down and spread his tongue across John's nipple before sucking it between his lips. John gasped, his fingers tightening around Paul's upper arm.

“Off, get this off,” Paul said, moving back and letting John sit up to pull the shirt the rest of the way off before rushing to press against him once more. John rocked his pelvis up, grinding his dick against Paul's and making Paul moan helplessly. He needed to be quiet, so quiet, but he wasn't sure he could be; it had been so long.

John pulled back to catch his breath, head against the pillow. His lips were puffy, slick with spit. Paul moved his fingers from John's shoulders up to cup his face, kissing his cheek once, and again, and more until he lost count.

“What you said earlier,” Paul panted, feeling reckless and wanting so much, “uh...that you wanted...I want that. We should do that.”

John stilled underneath him, listening. Paul knew intuitively that John knew exactly what he was referencing.

“D'you know what to do?” Paul asked, suspecting, hoping that John knew how this could be done, that he had maybe even planned for it at some point.

“Uh...,” John started, “Well...”

He laughed a little, uncomfortable or maybe hesitant, and cleared his throat, “Royston...y'know...uh, he told me --”

Paul blanched, pulling back to regard John seriously.

“You didn't say anything to him – about....about us --”

John shook his head quickly, frowning at Paul, “No, Jesus, Paul – he...uh, I think he was trying to talk me into fucking _him,_ actually...like, convince me that I should try it...”

Paul felt John smooth a hand along his side, pulling Paul back against him. He exhaled against John's chest, mind still juggling the idea of John with Royston... _easy, easy_ and all that. Christ...he thought back to watching John and Royston jabber at each other, high off the strips Royston had taught him to pull out from the Vicks...Paul should have fucking known, should have suspected...

“Funny enough, though, y'know, the whole time he was talking at me, I was thinking about you...about doing it to you,” John said, and then in a rush, “Or you to me, uh, either way.”

“ _Oh_.” The image of John beneath him, moaning in welcome as Paul entered him, wrapping his legs around Paul's back and urging him on, flooded into his brain.

“Very interesting, what he told me, though...” John trailed off, waiting to pique Paul's interest.

“Oh, yeah? What else did he say...?” Paul asked, obliging, curious.

“Well, there's stuff they use, uh...,” John began. Paul frowned, not grasping his meaning. John seemed to sense this, continuing, “To make it easier...y'know, break me in easy, like he said. Lubricant.”

Paul laughed. Of course John too remembered the fucking poem, was thinking of it also. How could they forget? John and Paul, blushing and avoiding each others' gaze, feeling like a fucking spotlight was on them; George muttering darkly about one in four men...and Paul thinking to himself that, at least in their little grouping, the ratio was even worse than that...

“Well...I guess...we'll have to find some of it. D'you reckon there're shops that sell it?” Paul laughed, sputtering at the thought, “And how would you even ask for it? 'Hullo, shopkeep, I need to be broken in EASY. Got anything for that?'!”

John took his hand off Paul's bicep so he could stifle his laughter in his fist. Paul tipped his head off John's chest, grinning up at him, before dipping it again to press a kiss to his shoulder. They could figure it out. Somehow, with John, all things, even the strangest things, seemed imminent, more than possible.

John choked back his laughter, his eyes searching Paul's, and then said, “It's easier to ask for in German, uh, actually...”

Paul's brain whirred, the import of John's words reverberating through him. “You already have some...”

“The sexy shop with all the weird dolls, you know, that Horst mentioned...? They had it there. Cheap too, I didn't even swipe it,” John said, his tone rushed.

_Oh._ Well, then...

“...hope you swiped one of the dolls, at least,” Paul said finally.

“No, imagine trying to hide that from Mimi! Sometimes I think she digs through my bin, even,” John hummed, then continued, “'Sides, between you, Cyn, the doll, and all, my cock would never get a moment's rest. Better for all of us to leave the dolls in Germany, poor little _frauleins._ ”

“Is it at Mimi's, then?” Paul asked.

John frowned at him, “No, I just said, I _didn't_ get a doll, Paul.”

Paul had to resist the urge to roll his eyes before saying, “No, the _lubricant_ , you git.”

“Ohh – eer, actually,” John was looking at him very curiously. “Actually, that's in my jacket pocket, I think.”

Paul took a brief moment to consider John's machinations, and then he sat up, squinting over at his chair to see if the familiar outline of John's jacket was there, then casting his eyes about the floor. No jacket.

“Where's your jacket, then?”

“I seem to remember a very eager, friendly young lad taking it off me the moment I stepped in your front door,” John said. “Very happy to see me, he was. Welcoming-like. Hospitality, he could teach you something about that...”

Paul chose to ignore him. He hesitated again for an instant, and then made up his mind.

“Mike hung it on the rack?” Paul was already slipping his feet to the floor, standing up.

“Hope so! It'll be tricky if we have to wake him up and ask him, now...”

“Wait here,” Paul started for his bedroom door, then paused, thinking. He took a moment to drag the covers back over John, and stopped to grab John's shirt off the floor and put it on. Better to have more clothes on if his dad decided to break his pattern of heavy-sleeping and fix himself an early morning snack instead...the shirt was nondescript enough to pass for one of Paul's own, anyway, especially since they dressed like Tweedledum and Tweedledee most of the time. He pulled his briefs back up where John's wandering hand had displaced them.

Paul's heart was racing but he tried to be as quiet as possible, darting across the small room, opening the bedroom door and slipping down the stairs as if in a trance.

When Paul re-entered his bedroom, he found John as he had left him, casting a wary eye on the door. Paul shut it slowly, quietly, and watched the dim outline of John's arm under the covers as John resumed idly palming himself, evidently confident that Paul was the only person likely to come through the door. Paul could see John looking towards his hands, questioningly, and held up the bottle as proof of his successful excursion.

Paul pulled John's shirt back off himself, vaguely noticing that his dick had softened a little without John's attention, and took a moment to watch John arch slightly into his hand.

He felt himself flush slightly, a shiver of embarrassment, and then stripped his underwear off, too, before climbing back on the bed. He was just positioning himself on his hands and knees when he heard John snickering beside him.

Not exactly the reaction he'd wanted – in fact, this seemed a patently inappropriate reaction to anyone offering themselves up to you – and Paul sent John what he hoped was a truly withering look of reproach. John seemed to take the hint, because it was in an apologetic tone that he offered, “No, I – uh – I just thought it would be better to get you worked up first. Y'know, properly.”

Paul shifted and settled into a sitting position instead, watching John's face. Well _,_ that was a different thing entirely, wasn't it?

“What did you have in mind?” he asked.

John leaned towards him, reaching up to cup the back of his neck and pulling him closer, brushing his cheek against Paul's before sliding back to kiss the corner of his mouth. Paul pushed the sheets off John's legs to run the palm of his hand along the length of John's thigh, gripping it tightly as John moved to kiss him properly. He could feel John smile against his lips.

“Anything you want,” John whispered, low and sweet, pulling back to dip his mouth towards Paul's neck and pressing a soft kiss there. Paul wrenched upwards quickly, involuntarily, struck with arousal at John's words.

“Suck me off, then, yeah?”

Paul made the request before his brain had even properly registered the question, but John seemed to welcome the suggestion, threading his fingers through Paul's hair and tilting his head back, kissing and nipping the crook of his neck, tonguing along his collarbone.

Paul heard John snort “bossy...” against his shoulder, and then John was pushing against his stomach, trying to get him to lie back on the bed.

“You like it,” Paul breathed, “I know you do.”

It was okay to say it here, in Paul's dark and cloistered room, with no one else around to hear it. John shook his head, but he shrugged in a helpless sort of way, grinning as Paul settled back. Anticipation pounded through Paul – he could feel sweat at the backs of his knees.

“Off – take those off,” he said, gesturing to John's briefs. John made a face – Paul could practically hear him teasing “bossy!” again – but acquiesced, pulling them down in a quick motion. Paul felt a distinct rush of blood to his cock at the sight of John's erection, and he took a moment to just look at him, growing more aroused as he admired John's shoulders, his dick and his narrow hips and muscular thighs and the sweat that was darkening the hair at his temples...then he met John's eyes and John bent over him, swiftly, kissing him again.

John broke away and they panted at each others' lips for an instant, seized by heat.

“Stop me – before you get too close, okay?” John whispered, and then he was moving down Paul's prone body, pausing to nuzzle his face against Paul's stomach. Something about John's studious look as he set about the task made Paul's throat clench. John dropped kisses around Paul's stomach and hips and the tops of his thighs, ignoring Paul's erection before pushing it out of the way to run his open mouth along the juncture between his hip and thigh. He could hear John make a tiny, pleased sigh; the noise went straight to his dick.

John glanced up into Paul's eyes and held his gaze, guiding the tip of Paul's cock into his mouth as Paul tried to silence a desperate groan. _God_ , Paul thought, his senses careening...it felt so fucking good...

Paul could feel John's hips moving, slight tremors against the mattress next to his ankle, and he craned his neck to watch him grind languidly against the sheets. He thought of John pressing against him in the same way, sliding together. Then, in a surge of heat, his mind shifted to John fucking him and he shuddered with the knowledge, the certainty, that it would happen, and soon, and that they _both_ knew it. John moaned around his dick in a way that made Paul wonder if he was thinking the very same thing...

Paul _had_ thought of doing it before this particular night, on a night months and months before...he tried to place the memory. They had stumbled rather drunkenly home from the Cracke early one morning, heading to Mendips because Mimi was off visiting Mater and John had said he wanted Paul in _his_ bed for once. They had crept up the stairs less than successfully, John hissing “be quiet!” in a loud stage-whisper, never one to care about bothering the boarders. John had spent about two minutes of drunken seriousness tapping out some nonsense on his typewriter, wanting to get it down before he forgot, as Paul stripped mostly bare and collapsed onto the bed, watching John hunt for the right keys. John had finished casting his thoughts onto paper and shucked off his jacket before coming over to grin down at Paul – 'Shove over, then' – and wrapping his body up tight behind him.

They had spent a few minutes like that, a cooing, giggling cocoon, John pressing his hand to various spots on Paul's chest and stomach and ranking how strongly he could feel his heart beat in each place (“not hardly” was the report from somewhere near Paul's hip). Then John had started kissing along his neck and shoulders, fingers trailing along the top of Paul's briefs, and Paul had savored the feeling of John growing hard against him, even through John's jeans. Paul had tried, then, to turn over and face him, but John had pushed back, saying, “No...no, let me...” and started to grind against Paul's backside with agonizing slowness. He had felt John undoing his own belt and zipper, the repeated press of John's hand against his lower back as he stroked himself. Then John had shoved Paul's briefs down around his thighs and taken Paul in hand, coaxing him until he was stiff and wanting, and began grinding his cock against Paul's bare arse until Paul had felt slightly wild, wanting John inside him, wanting him everywhere, all the time. He had been so close, then, to begging John to fuck him – had come so close to speaking it out loud – but the idea had been so potent that instead he had come into John's hand just thinking of it. The memory made Paul groan quietly. He had wanted John so much then...he wanted John so much now...

John was bobbing his head up and down, eyes blissfully closed. Paul watched him, intensely mesmerized and excited, as he hollowed his cheeks around Paul's length.

John drew his mouth off of Paul's dick with a slick sound, and ran his open mouth along the side of it, the head of it bumping against his cheek and leaving a trail of spit in its wake. Paul felt nearly dizzy with arousal, certain that all the blood in his body was now pumping through his cock alone.

“I want you like this all the time,” John murmured, so quietly that Paul had to strain to hear, “...all the fucking time...”

“Ye – yeah...,” Paul stammered. He had meant it to sound like a question – meant to goad John on, relishing the filthy way he would talk when he really got going -- but it came out more like an acknowledgment, an agreement.

John moved his hand up to grip Paul's prick again, pushing it towards his stomach and angling down to press his open mouth against Paul's balls, and Paul just _barely_ had the presence of mind to grind out, “Stop – stop – I can't --”

John pulled back immediately, leaving Paul to breathe deep, attempting to stave off his orgasm. He watched in fascination as John pushed himself up onto his knees and began stroking himself slowly, looming over Paul on the tiny bed, his eyes busy running up and down Paul's body. It took Paul a moment to realize that John was waiting for him to do something. He hesitated for a beat, looking at John jerking himself, his dick looking so heavy and full that Paul's brain faltered, stuttering with desire. Then Paul rolled onto his side and drew himself up onto his hands and knees in front of John.

In this position, with John behind him, Paul's skin prickled with awareness, feeling over-exposed. But then John made a strangled sound in his throat and babbled something like _Oh, fuck, baby, yes._ Paul figured that if John liked it, it must be alright, really, and that thought quelled the embarrassed feeling. He reached underneath himself to give his prick a few fortifying tugs before settling onto his forearms, trusting for John to use whatever Royston-imbued knowledge he had to prepare them.

Then Paul felt John's cock slide wetly against his flank and it was with an almost stupefying burst of arousal that he realized John was already leaking pre-cum. He had the sudden desire to turn over and take John's cock into his mouth, to gather on his tongue the wetness that had spread there, but then John was pushing his knees apart and it was all he could do to breathe and focus dimly on the press of John's calves against his.

John reached over to grab the bottle of lubricant that had been discarded among the bedsheets. He was breathing heavily already and Paul wondered with a little relief if this could possibly last all that long – at least if he found it too painful or unpleasant it would be over quickly. He could hear the wet, slick sound as John covered his dick with the lubricant in a few short strokes, and then the click of the bottle as John recapped it. Then there was a hand on his hip and the sudden pressure of John guiding himself to push at Paul's entrance, and Paul jerked forward with a quick, involuntary burst of something like panic.

The hand on his hip flattened, soothing.

“Okay?” John sounded strangely apologetic, and Paul briefly considered rolling over, sucking John off instead and trying to make him forget this whole strange idea. But he remembered how nervous he had been to do that, at first – he had gagged and sputtered the first (and second and...) times, and now he fucking dreamed of doing it, would wake up achingly stiff, thinking of John in his mouth. The only thing stronger than the fear of doing it had been the desire to do it...

“Uh, yeah,” he laughed awkwardly, and heard a corresponding huff of laughter from John, “just...uh...”

John shifted his hand from Paul's hip to rest in the small of his back, dragging through the sweat that was pooling there.

“Sweaty little bugger, aren't you?” John asked, but he sounded patient, fond, and Paul could feel his other hand slide along his thigh to grip at his hip, massaging gently.

“Buggee,” Paul said indistinctly, dropping his head onto his forearms.

“What?”

“I'm the bugg-ee, I think, yeah? You're the bugger,” Paul said, and then amended, “Bugger-er. Uh...try again, then, let's...”

It was a mark of John's nervousness that he didn't offer even a token laugh in response to Paul's joke.

“Alright?” John said, but he didn't move. Paul could sense his hesitation, his worry, but didn't know what to say to reassure him... _it will hurt, but maybe I will like it – some people evidently do – so go ahead, mate?_ Didn't sound very convincing...He tried to think of what to say, how to arrange the situation so that John would feel able to move forward.

“John, it's okay, c'mon... _I want you to_...”

He heard John exhale with a hiss and knew that had hit the mark. For the second time that night he felt John's prick pressing up against his arsehole and tried to relax, to focus on the sound of John breathing. He felt John's hands spreading him apart and then, _there_ , John was pushing inside him with a strangled, fractured groan. He shut his eyes against the pain. For a second or two he thought it could not possibly fit, that they would have to stop because there was just no room for it, but John managed to squeeze past the initial resistance. It was less painful then Paul had expected, but somehow stranger, a disconcertingly inside-out feeling that he couldn't quite understand. He heard a deep sigh from John and then felt his hips pressed up fully against him, and realized that John's whole length was inside of him now. _That's good – the worst is over_ , Paul thought dazedly -- now he could focus without dread of what could come. He exhaled.

“God, Paul...” John sounded like Paul felt, confused and breathless and kind of overcome. There was a whimper from John and then he began to pull out so, so slowly, and Paul could feel the movement in every centimeter of his body.

“Yeah? Tell me...,” Paul managed to say, wanting to be grounded in John's thoughts, to know how he was experiencing this. John's hands were on Paul's hips, gripping him in place as John started to work his way back in.

“You...fuck,” John started, sounding too worked up to speak, pulling out and thrusting in again in halting movements, “I can't – believe...”

“Keep going,” Paul choked out, not sure if he was referring to John's talking or the deep push of his cock inside him.

“So good...you feel so fucking good...you look so good, Paul,” John whispered in a quick, broken rush, and the combination of what he was saying and how he was saying it made Paul moan, suddenly so pleased and aroused and overtaken with the actuality of providing John with this. He could feel his swollen cock hitting his thigh as John sped up, whispering _fuckfuckfuck_ as he worked out a slightly faster rhythm. Paul shifted his weight to one elbow, angling his hand underneath himself. If John would just keep talking, keep fucking him, he was so close...

He had just wrapped his fingers around himself and started to jerk off when he felt John's hand knock against his, circling around from the other side.

“No, let me, I want it...,” John said, and Paul groaned quietly as John gripped his dick tightly, the pressure nearly enough, “Want to feel how much you love this...”

Paul could feel his cock jump in response to John's words, and evidently John felt it too, still holding him, because he moaned suddenly like he was totally, totally overwhelmed. John managed about one and a half more thrusts before Paul felt him stall, taut and quivering and he was gone, throbbing tightly and releasing hot inside him.

Paul had been right, he thought hazily, about John's stamina – the idea of what they were doing had been such a turn on that he hadn't been able to fuck Paul for very long at all. It had been alright, that way, though, gotten them both used to it, and allowed Paul to gather ideas for next time...next time when, maybe, as John had said, Paul would get to do it to him instead. _Either way._

Paul waited a few moments, letting John recover, listening for his breathing to steady, before pushing back slightly – he could actually feel John's dick softening inside him. Somehow that was powerfully erotic and exciting in and of itself. Paul groaned lowly. John roused himself and pressed forward, his chest coming down to meet Paul's back as he started to toss Paul off.

It felt so good now, John wrapped around him and soft inside him, kissing down the center of his back and pumping his dick with just the perfect, knowing amount of pressure...

“Christ, I can't – it's too hard...”

Paul felt John pull out of him and shift away, sitting on the bed beside him. _What the fuck..._

The joke was too obvious for Paul to resist, but he felt a thread of irritation enter his voice nonetheless, making his words seem less like a joke than an order – “It's when it's hard that you're _supposed_ to do it, John.”

It was really too unfair to contemplate, after all – John leaving him to – what? Finish in his own hand? When Paul could just now feel the disconcerting, unexpected sensation of John's cum leaking out of him...

John huffed out a laugh.

“No, I mean – the angle, my wrist, I can't do it. Just – just lie down, I want to watch you anyway,” John said.

It was an obvious enough statement – John had said similar things before, stripping the clothes off of him in a rush, pausing to watch Paul in a kind of quiet fervor – but the knowledge of it still sent a spike of heat and longing through Paul. He moved to stretch out beside John on the bed.

John ran his hand up Paul's chest, tapping his fingers in the middle of the barely-there smidgeon of dark hair before smoothing his hot palm over Paul's ribs.

“You lost weight in Hamburg, y'know?” John murmured.

“Mmm, dad was shocked. He asked if they'd been feeding us anything there – didn't tell him about the prellies,” Paul replied, speaking softly. He loved these moments with John – just whispering to him in quiet intimacy. For a second he wondered if this was what being married was like...

“Well, I'll vouch for you to your dad – you took your cod liver pills every day,” John teased.

“Yes, I was such a good boy. At least on that count,” Paul said.

“Right. _And_ you only gave, what, one hand-job in three months. Very good.”

“He would be so proud, I'm sure,” Paul said, laughing gamely but also cringing a little. He did not want to consider his dad in this context; it was a thought best shoved aside.

“What he doesn't know...”

“Won't send him into cardiac arrest?” Paul laughed, “LOTS of things I'd rather he not know, y'know.”

“No idea what you're talking about...” John grinned widely, gently teasing, before unfolding himself against Paul's side and pressing a smattering of kisses to the base of his throat. Paul tilted his chin up to accommodate him with a low sigh.

“Oh, yes...”

John was lazily circling his finger over Paul's sweaty stomach at the point Paul decided his patience was wearing thin. He nudged John with his hip.

“John, please...,” he said; he recognized that his voice had taken on a slight whine but was beyond caring.

“Hmmm? Oh, that?!” John teased, pretending to be startled and doing a mock spit-take at Paul's erection, “Well, that we'll have to take care of, then...”

Paul was gratified when John finally took hold of his dick, running his palm roughly up from his bollocks to the tip before gripping it and starting in on a slow rhythm. John had long taken some sly pride in how efficiently he could get Paul off (“Two tugs and a pinched nipple and you're gone, you _slattern_ ”), but this could be one for the books, still. John's grasp was so firm, the angle exquisite, perfect pressure and everything, and then John was whispering in his ear, “Come on, come on, baby...”

Paul started fucking up into John's hand in earnest, trying to narrow in on the sensation, tension building in from the edges of his brain.

“Just like that, yeah, please, please...,” Paul found himself saying, verging into incoherence as John's hand worked him steadily.

John had his cheek pressed against Paul's now and Paul could sense that his eyes were cast where Paul's were, both watching his hand moving on Paul's cock.

“'m gonna' come – I'm gonna' come,” Paul chanted haltingly.

John nudged Paul's cheek with his own. Paul could hear him swallow, pressed so close.

“Well, you'd better,” John said, and Paul did, with a heated groan, spurting all over John's hand and his own stomach.

Before he could even begin to come down, John had already turned to kiss him, sucking on his bottom lip and then running his tongue against it. John made the sweetest little noise in the back of his throat, a muted sound of happiness, and Paul had to tamp down on the fierce desire to hold onto him, to never let him go no matter what. He wanted to lay here in the dark with John forever.

John giggled against Paul's mouth and pulled away.

“Christ, soak me, why don't you...,” he said, wiggling his fingers as evidence before swiping his hand across Paul's stomach in an ineffective gesture towards cleaning him off, “I'm going to go wash up...”

He hopped off the bed, still holding his hand aloft to keep from getting the mess on anything. Paul watched as he found his briefs and tried to work them on one-handed. He leaned across the bed to help tug them up over John's right side. Paul wanted to say, “come back soon,” but wasn't sure his voice could make it sound light-hearted, so he said nothing instead. He rolled over to grab his underwear off the floor and slipped into them, ignoring the lingering dampness on his stomach, before pulling the covers over himself.

John grimaced comically as he struggled to open Paul's door with his clean left hand, and then he was out the door. Paul half-listened, lost in thought, to the noise of the toilet flushing and then the quiet sound of the tap running before John came creeping back into the room, shutting the door quietly behind him.

Paul glanced at John's front and then scrunched up his nose.

“Why are you all wet?” he asked, nodding to the spreading damp spot on the front of John's briefs.

John shrugged and grimaced again, upping the theatricality, saying, “I had to wash it in the sink. And then I didn't think I could dry it on the fucking towels in there – obviously, imagine your dad finding my pubic hair on them – so here I am. I'm going to get pneumonia from this and it's all _your_ fault.”

He sunk onto the bed next to Paul, grinning.

“My fault?!” Paul managed through his laughter, “How do you figure?”

“It was you in your leathers, mate, that sent us down this road – don't you remember?”

“I do, I do...,” Paul giggled in the semi-hysterical way that only John could make him, and then laughed even harder as he imagined John in the tiny bathroom, standing on his tip-toes so he could hold his dick under the faucet. John pulled the covers over himself and watched, smiling broadly, as Paul managed to get a hold of himself.

Paul cast a little glance at his bedside clock and groaned as he figured the numbers, “D'you know...I have to be at work in – FIVE hours. Christ...”

John scooted into place against Paul's side, throwing an arm across his waist and murmuring into his neck, “Don't wake me when you go, I need the rest.”

Paul elbowed him, just a little.

“Thought you were supposed to get up and make me tea, send me off with a kiss...” Paul said, whispering into John's hair.

John hummed. Paul could feel him smile, cheek pressed against his shoulder. He could feel sleep edging gently in.

“You could suck me off before you leave for work...that might help your morale,” John said.

Paul suspected that might actually be true.

“Mmm, no, see, then I'd have to explain my hard-on to the blokes at work. 'My mate had me suck him off this morning but fell asleep before doing me'. They already don't like me...” Paul laughed quietly, allowing himself to imagine the scene for a brief instant, tiredness making things seem unspun, silly. His weathered co-workers, their mouths dropping open in astonishment. It wouldn't be funny after that, though, not at all...

“Everybody likes you, Macca.” John sounded so sweet as he said it that Paul's heart kind of ached. John would sometimes phrase his own thoughts about Paul this way, Paul knew – 'Everybody likes you', so-and-so 'thinks you look like Elvis, mate, a dead-ringer', 'Well, _you_ could charm _anybody_ out of five quid, easy', and more that Paul kept tucked away, safely hidden in some corner of his mind so he could ration them out. Paul hesitated, trying to think of what to say; he wanted to draw John out further but couldn't think how to do so.

“Oh, do they...?” Paul asked, but he immediately regretted it. The question hung between them, weak and insipid, and Paul felt stupid, _stupid_. John could be funny about these things, Paul thought, as if vulnerability made his teeth sharp; sometimes he'd kick back if you tried to draw him closer. Paul knew it wasn't _unreasonable_ , really, to want some reassurance, some fixedness or certainty from John after all this, but he hadn't thought through his approach. He felt caught out.

“Everybody, yes,” John whispered into the quiet, and it was enough: both he and John knew what was being said. Relief, low and gorgeous, steadied Paul's heartbeat.

He felt John nestling in deeper against his side. He probably wanted to spend every day with him for the rest of his life; that was Paul's last clear thought before he fell asleep.

* * *

Paul had meant to sneak out without waking John, leaving him to sleep until noon or two or whatever late hour suited him – when Jim and Mike would hopefully be gone and John could creep out, no one the wiser. But as he tried to climb silently over John, John instead tugged him down against his chest.

“ _Ooof_...sorry, John,” he whispered. With the very early morning sun bleeding into the room, Paul could see that John was smiling up at him, looking a little bleary but overall quite pleased with himself.

“Caught you...,” John murmured. He cast a glance at Paul's mouth and Paul leaned down to press a little smudged kiss to his lips. He relaxed into John's arms, tucking his face against John's neck and breathing deep. It would be so nice to just fall back asleep...

John poked him in the side, and he let out a grunt of frustration.

“ _You_ have to go to work, boy,” John said. The overall tone was joking, but Paul could sense a hard-edge underneath – or maybe it was just his own mixed dread-disappointment at the idea of going to work darkening his perception.

“John...”

John hummed into the morning quiet.

“What would your dad say?” John asked quietly.

Paul shook his head, not really wanting to start in on this topic; he was tired and wherever the conversation was going would end up unpleasant. Gritting his teeth a little, he said, “Probably, uh, 'Get up, son, the day starts today' or...y'know, one of those.”

John made a noise of recognition – he was always butchering Jim's sayings for comedic effect – and asked, “And what would I say?”

Paul sighed and rolled off of him, then said tightly, “I don't know, mate. Figure you'll tell me.”

“Well, right...I would say, 'Paul, quit your stupid brummer striving crap, we have things to do.'”

“That's your idea, then? Quit my job and...everything will work out alright, somehow. Right,” Paul said, feeling enormously frustrated.

They had had a variant of this argument dozens of times. John did not seem to understand – it wasn't his fault, Paul reminded himself, feeling a pang of grief on John's behalf – he hadn't ever had a father – but he could never seem to understand that Paul had a duty to his. Paul was just trying to bring in some money and ease up his dad's worries, lessen his burden...and he had only gone along with the job idea because John had fucked off without warning. Paul had already told him that.

Besides, hadn't Paul chosen John hundreds of times? If John wanted to make this into a competition between his dad and John, John had clearly already won. It was so patently obvious...Every time he had skipped school just to be with John, every record tucked into his waistband at John's behest, every prellie and every broken promise to his dad, hadn't he always chosen John, and gladly, too? And now John wanted to complain because Paul had a job?

Paul thought of an argument he'd had with his dad months before – some stupid argument about him needing to do his school work when he had been headed instead to John's house. His dad had said, in an awful sort of quiet voice, “I don't understand the hold he has on you, Paul.” Paul had just stuttered pathetically in response, unnerved, cold panic flooding him. He had still left, though, ignoring his dad's sigh of frustration as he turned away; John had been waiting and so he had gone.

“Everything _will_ work out alright...I wouldn't – I'm not – I won't have you living on the street, y'know? Things are happening now, things will happen,” John said, a quiet urgency in his voice.

Paul made a low noise in his throat but did not respond.

“Listen...I...you know as well as anybody that I can't do a job like that, I'd be in the madhouse within a week,” he made a face at Paul, just briefly, then continued in the same serious tone, “So the only thing doing is for us to be together...you and I, together, we've really got something, don't you think?”

Paul could only nod, feeling spellbound, wanting desperately to hear what else John would say.

“We just need a few more breaks like that Hamburg gig, just a little luck, and we'll be set, I know it. But it's got to be both of us...I can't do it without you,” he said, glancing sidelong at Paul and then looking back, gaze firmly fixed on the ceiling, “I wouldn't want to.”

“...okay,” Paul said simply. There was some magic or logic there that he could not argue against, could not even try. Nothing in the universe could compare to the feeling of being with John, to the world that they wrought between the two of them. If John needed him there was only one place for him to be.

“Yeah?”

Paul shook his head, trying to clear it. He wanted to say something that would match what John had said to him, that could prove the depth of his commitment to their partnership.

“John, I...I would never want to do anything else,” he said. It was true – from the day they'd met all Paul had wanted was to be in John's band, to be close to him and make music with him, listen to him talk and laugh at his jokes, make him smile and be with him.

Paul paused, and started again, “I'll have to...I don't know what I'll say to my dad.... I can't quit right away, probably, you'll need to be patient...”

He looked at John carefully.

“Mmm...,” John said in response; Paul knew _that_ was a dubious proposition.

“I mean it, John...you know the band...the band is the most important thing to me.”

“You'll quit your job, then, if it interferes with the group,” John stated. Paul had not said it in so many words, but that had essentially been his point. He would choose the group – which for the most part really meant _John_ , of course, he could no longer bother to think otherwise – over anything.

John stuck his hand towards Paul; it took him a moment to realize that John intended for them to seal the agreement with a handshake. It was somehow both childish and adult and Paul found himself immensely charmed by John's evident sincerity.

“What, you don't want to shake on it?” John asked, shrewd as ever, noting Paul's momentary hesitation.

“I don't know, mate...,” Paul laughed as he took John's hand and shook it firmly, “Funny, that's all, to shake hands – y'know, after the stuff we've done together...”

“We can shake other things on it, then, if you'd like,” John said, grinning slyly at him. He did not let go of Paul's hand. Paul felt unmade and remade, enveloped in certainty.

“C'mere,” Paul said, pulling him close and kissing him. He was so glad to be home.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The washing-the-dick-in-the-sink thing is a nod to whatsherass's decade old (time flies...) but totally timeless 'Bag O'Nails'.


End file.
